Adam and Christ: Ascending and Descending Forces

GA 266II — 24 April 1912, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

In the previous lesson¹, an image was presented to our soul which, in its nature, triggers forces within us that can be of help to us on our occult path.

Today, two inspiring thoughts should come before your soul that can be equally effective. The essence of such thoughts, such questions, is that we allow them to rest in our soul for a while, that we let them speak to us without touching them.

Exoterically, these two thoughts have been dealt with sufficiently, albeit in a completely different sense, so that they have led people to the most impossible comments and disputes. Esoterically understood, they are an aid to the occult student.

The first of these inspiring thoughts is “the motherless human being” or, better, “the motherless human creature,” which is referred to as Adam in the biblical record.

Everything that we encounter in human beings is inconceivable without a mother. The only motherless human being is Adam; only the father forces were active in him. Of course, we must not imagine him physically or sensually before our soul, for the physical conditions of today did not exist on our earth planet at that time when Yahweh created the first human being on earth in his etheric body, and he created him from the substances of the earth planet, as is also indicated in the Bible. These substances, these earthly forces, are still present in every human being today, so that we can say: Yahweh is the father of us all—and the planet is the mother of us all.

The father forces are therefore still at work in human beings today; they are an earth-bound, planetary force. They are at work in everything on earth, including human beings. For it is not only the forces of the mother that act on the child after conception, but also the forces of the father; they pass from the earth to the child through the father and form the building forces that are most effective until the age of thirty-three.

Let us be clear about this: what happens at the birth of a new human being? The mother carries one part within herself, but the other part is supersensible, invisible, and connected with the father. Meditate on this idea of a motherless human being, try to grasp it purely spiritually, and place a second image beside it: that of the fatherless Christ.

If the planetary forces, coming from the father, are predominantly [effective] until the mystery of Golgotha, then from this time on, through Christ Jesus, the forces of the cosmos, the mother forces, are added. We know that this most important of all earthly events falls in the fourth cultural period of the post-Atlantean era. This was preceded by the Egyptian cultural epoch, in which the cult of Isis was cultivated in its highest perfection in the Egyptian mysteries. In the figure of Isis, the Egyptians worshipped the forces of nature that are expressed in all minerals, plants, and animals. But filled with sorrow and deep melancholy, the Egyptian soul looked upon human beings and said to itself that they were not aware of these forces of nature; therefore, it depicted Isis veiled, and it was said that no mortal should ever lift the veil to reach her! What does this mean? Nothing other than that the goddess does not dwell in the physical realm, but in the astral realm, and that only those who have passed through the gate of death can recognize her;² no living person could lift her veil. This means that while they were alive, the effect of the Isis forces was denied them.

And what were these Isis forces? They were the pure mother forces which, before the mystery of Golgotha, could only be granted to human beings in the spiritual world, that is, when they had passed through the gate of death.

Knowledge of this was contained in the Egyptian mysteries. Above the image of Isis were the words: “I am who I am, who I was, who I will be,” the same “Ejeh asher ejeh” that was once spoken to Moses from the burning bush. The Egyptian soul could only glimpse the mystery of Golgotha, through which the pure mother forces were to become effective in living human beings. Only when Christ Jesus, the fatherless human being, connected himself completely with the earth by passing through the gate of death, only from that time on could the pure mother forces — the forces from the cosmos — work in human beings on earth.

Our modern scholars may smile when they look at the animal worship of the Egyptians from their narrow perspective. We can only be filled with deep reverence, for we know that behind this lies the veneration of those forces of nature that were hidden from human beings. And we look with deep admiration at the high wisdom that underlies all these mysteries. Even though the downward force, the mother force, is already at work in human beings, the father forces are stronger up to this point. If human beings were ruled only by the downward forces — the Christ forces — they would not incarnate on Earth. If, on the other hand, only the upward forces, the planetary forces, were to dominate him, he would always live on earth; there would then be no death.

What was Isis in the Egyptian mysteries, this sacred center of power, is presented to us in Christianity as Mary Sophia in the Gospel of John. The union of the ascending and descending forces, which took place in the mystery of Golgotha, has made it possible for human beings to now perceive [also the mother forces] between birth and death. Christ Jesus could not grow older than thirty-three years. From the occultist's point of view, every human being is actually already at the stage at the age of thirty-three where they carry their body with them as a corpse. Of course, the effect of the forces and their transformation do not occur all at once, but take place gradually. Both, including the mother forces, are present in human beings from the beginning; it is just that the father forces predominate, namely the building forces of the earth.

During this time of the father forces, we live the life that is karmically determined by our previous life. However, from the time when the dying mother forces predominate, we create through this spiritual power what we will only live out in the next life, i.e., the karma of the next life.

The father or constructive force of nature works in us without our intervention; on the other hand, we must strive and work in the spiritual realm so that we become conscious of the effect of the mother force. We must become conscious of this high, noble force, for it is the force that flows directly into us from Christ.

Once again, as so often, the meaning of the Rosicrucian motto becomes apparent to us in all its depth: We are born from the divine – Ex Deo nascimur. The Adamic force of the motherless human being has a building and sustaining effect on the physical body; in contrast, since the Mystery of Golgotha, the fatherless human being, Christ Jesus, has been working as the dying force, the force that leads to the death of the physical body here on earth and awakens spiritual life if we consciously surrender ourselves to it. “In Christ we die,” that is, we die with all our physical concepts, the lower self that was built up in us during the time when the Adamic forces were active—thus the last sentence of the Rosicrucian saying becomes a true experience for us: “In the Holy Spirit we are reborn.”

Record B

To what was given here last time,³ An additional aid can be added, consisting of two powerful images which, unfortunately, have been much disputed in the course of human evolution.

One image is that of the motherless human being. This is hinted at in the Bible as Adam, who had a father but no mother. The father forms him from the dust of the earth, that is, from forces contained in the earth. Thus, there is something in every human being that is not visible, a system of forces that belongs to the earth and is not directly given through the interaction of the sexes or through heredity, but is given by the divine Father through the detour of the paternal organism. Father and mother both give something supersensible; only that which comes through the mother is bound to the organism of her body, while that which comes through the father — indirectly through the paternal organism — is taken directly from the forces of the earth. Only the latter was in Adam; he was the motherless human being.

We find the counter-image of this in the fatherless Christ or Christ Jesus. Already in the third post-Atlantean epoch, which preceded that of the Christ appearance, we find the figure of Isis, who is reminiscent of the Madonna appearance, but is nevertheless different. She is the veiled Isis, about whom the Egyptians felt tragically: No mortal has ever lifted her veil, that is, during life no human being can attain what Isis expressed. She represented the spiritual forces that had not descended to earth and could only be found in the spiritual worlds. The Egyptians saw these heavenly forces at work in the natural world around them—hence, for example, their veneration of animals—but they knew that these forces only became active in human beings after death. Only then can human beings participate in these heavenly forces. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the forces that had never before worked in a human being on Earth descend into humanity — and although one cannot say that Sophia-Maria, the mother of Christ Jesus, was Isis, she nevertheless represents Isis, since it was in her that those heavenly forces first worked on earth, and then in other human beings, and since that time, with the help of the maternal organism, they have united with the father forces coming from the earth. Thus, since that time, what the Egyptians felt could only be attained after death has come to earth. Thus the kingdom of heaven has come to earth, and here on earth the veil of Isis can be lifted by those who have the Christ force within them. This is the resurrection of the third period in the fifth.

Theosophists can understand this if they pay attention to the conflict in human nature. Two forces are at work in human beings: descending and ascending. If only the former were present in human beings, they would never be able to come to earth; they would have to remain in the spiritual world. If only the ascending forces were present in them, they would never be able to leave the physical world once they were in it. (An example of the descending forces acting alone is provided by the group souls of animals, which is why they cannot descend to the physical plane.) Both forces are at work in human beings, but initially the ascending forces predominate. This continues until about the age of thirty-three or thirty-five, when the descending forces gain the upper hand. This is also the reason why Christ had to die at the age of thirty-three: the descending forces were at work in him, those of heaven, which could no longer keep him on earth. In Adam, the ascending forces were at work — not these alone, of course, just as both forces are present in human beings, but one prevails over the other. Thus, in human evolution, the first type of forces to manifest themselves are the ascending forces in Adam, the earthly forces given to him by the divine Father — and then the descending forces in Christ, the fatherless human being. Until the age of thirty-three, we carry Adam within us; at the age of thirty-three, we have developed everything that the earth can give us. Then we have within us everything that will later be returned to the earth—or to fire. What we develop after this time happens through the Christ forces, which become stronger and stronger as decay increases.

The Buddha idea is to break the connection with the earth and seek the heavenly forces in an extraterrestrial sphere. The Christ idea is to experience these forces here on earth ourselves. In this way we can feel that Adam must die in us so that Christ can live in us. This is expressed in a different way by our saying:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

Record C

Two thoughts can help the esotericist beyond the last exercise or in conjunction with it: This is the thought of the motherless Adam, who was created by the divine Father principle, by Yahweh. For the forces that are the ascending forces, the forces that work in the physical body from the forces of the earth, are received by man indirectly through the paternal share in his physicality; they work until the middle of his life, building up his body, approximately until the age of thirty-five. If man had only these forces, he would never leave the earth in death. The other forces that man receives through his mother come from the spiritual-soul world, from the cosmos, and are the destructive forces; if they were to act alone, they would not allow man to come to earth through birth at all. This is the fatherless Christ. These forces did not flow into human beings before our era; they only acted on human beings in the period between death and new birth and were only present on earth in the three lower realms of nature. The Egyptians knew that the Isis forces could be found in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms; there they could be found, but not in humans between birth and death. Hence the deep meaning of the animal deities of the Egyptians. For the first time, these forces flowed into Jesus of Nazareth through the Virgin Sophia-Mary. That is why Jesus Christ had to die when he was thirty-three years old, because the destructive forces began to work, since the Adam forces were so weak in him and the Christ forces so strong that he could no longer remain on earth. We are born from God through the Adam forces, we die in Christ, and through the Holy Spirit we hope to be reborn one day.

Recording D

Every Sunday at 9 a.m.: In the spirit of humanity, I feel united with all esotericists.